


Tomorrow

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:50:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3063371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a moment in time from Louis and Lestat's early life together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> A while back this was a drabble (title was the prompt). I re-read it and felt like expanding it a little.

"We have lighted many fools their way to dusty death, have we not?" Louis's light tone did little to veil the barb tossed my way as we exited the little theater.

"The play's the thing," I said carelessly. "Why ruin what has been a perfectly pleasant evening? Can you not leave your melancholy behind for once?" I turned and grasped his shoulders. "Is it so much to ask? "

His gaze was enigmatic, smoothly unreadable for a long moment and then the stiffness in his shoulders eased somewhat. “No. Not too much to ask.” 

I swallowed the biting words that rose up—apparently it was to be a night where we fought one another to not upset the delicate balance of his fine sensibilities and my incomprehension of same. There were times when he very definitely strove for abrasiveness, his efforts as sturdy and focused as any that I so often put forth.

We maneuvered our way along through the press of people on the wooden banquette, routinely moving to flatten ourselves against the buildings we passed whenever we heard vehicles or hoof beats approaching at anything above a slow walk so as to avoid liberal dousings of mud and ordure. This activity became tedious after only a few minutes and I took a timely opportunity to pull him with me into a side alley after forcing the narrow gate open with a hard wrench. I turned and herded him down the bricked throat, stopping when I was certain that we were deep enough In the shadows to avoid notice from the street. Shadowed enough for that, yes, but I could see Louis’s face clearly, his features knitted into a delightful expression of profound annoyance. 

“I appreciate being freed from lashings of mud and shit, Lestat, but now what?” He glanced upward at a darkened window above. 

“No one’s home,” I said, after listening a moment. We’ll go around to the back and wait a while for the crowd to thin out. Or we can leap a few walls and come out on Rue St. Pierre.” It was all I could do not to bray completely inappropriate laughter at his supreme irritation.

“We will wait,” he said at length, moving down the alley to a second gate that lead to a small courtyard. The area was overgrown with jasmine vine and fan palms that rattled in the warm wind. He seated himself on a rickety bench and looked at me. “I have no intention of leaping walls and frightening the residents,” he sniffed. “I don’t need to read your mind to know what you’ll get up to.” 

I sat down beside him. “Well, it wasn’t what I had in mind when I opened the gate,” I admitted. I glanced at the stripes of mud on my jacket and trousers. The boots were hopeless. Louis had only a vague spattering on his sleeve; he had been walking closest the wall.

“Is that so? What did you have in mind, then?”

Such a question. Was he all seriousness? Challenging? Amorous? I knew which choice I preferred, seeing as his mood had been distant for some little while. I sat beside him. “Nothing nefarious, I promise. I wanted to be away from the press. You know how it stimulates my appetite.” No sense in trying to avoid what he knew to be the norm. “Not to mention the mud. There was a coach and four rattling our way and nowhere to avoid it.” I grimaced at my jacket.

Louis nodded absently and I knew then that I had chosen the right tack. His face cleared and he seemed to relax in increments, leaning toward me and daubing at the mud on my sleeve with his handkerchief. He ceased his efforts after a little while and shifted to look at my face. When he is not agitated or in some way upset or angry with me, his countenance when he looks at me borders on worshipful. I know how that sounds and I am well aware that I am a vain creature, but I am telling the honest truth. I loved the expression not because it fed my considerable ego, but that he allows me to see it at all. It reassures me that there is love in his heart for me. When I saw the expression this night, it also gave me pause for I realized at that moment how long it had been since he looked at me thus.

His light touch on my cheek drove the line of thought from me: we remained still for a brief and somehow endless span of time, long enough for me to think I was a fool for pressing him so hard and so often to what end? To be like me? I had been drawn to him precisely because he wasn’t like me in the least; he was so many of the things that I was not. A mystery, a cypher that I did not have the cleverness to decode. The brush of his lips against mine drew a sigh from me. He is entirely mine, I thought, all he wants is for me to be entirely his. His fingers slipped to my nape and the kiss deepened. 

From the house we heard the front door slam and moments later, a light born to the upstairs window above us. Louis laughed soundlessly and when I looked back from the window his smile was completely disarming, a little boy caught at something forbidden. He leaned and whispered into my ear, "There will always be tomorrow," he said. "And tomorrow and tomorrow." Then he rose, and moved with eerie, silent vampire speed past me and over the wall, leaving me open-mouthed and alone on the bench, striving desperately not to collapse to the ground with delighted laughter.

**FIN**


End file.
